Acts 12:5
If you would have told me, this preacher’s daughter from the south, that one day the Lord would ask me to start a ministry missions project into the strip clubs of our city, I would have gotten myself tickled while I took another bite out of my fried chicken. But God loves to stretch us, grow us, challenge us and use us.
When we gathered women leaders from different churches to cast the first vision for what has become Love Nashville, I felt strongly that our evangelistic outreach into these darkest corners of our city were an answer to some mother, or sister or father’s prayer for their girl. As I think of the call and challenge that went out over our church body during the summer months, to begin to write down the names of the lost we know and pray over them, I am reminded once again of the power of prayer and the deliverance that it brings.
Peter was thrown in prison. James, John’s brother has just been killed. Peter had no reason to believe his outcome would be any different. And yet, tucked away in Chapter twelve of Acts is this verse. “Peter was therefore kept in prison, but (I love that word in the vocabulary of God) constant [earnest] prayer was offered to God for him by the church.” At the cry of those prayers an angel of The Lord came down and escorted Peter to his miraculous freedom. Wow, what a way to escape death.
And yet, it was the prayers of God’s church that I believe created the environment for such a miracle to happen. God is moved by our prayers. Psalm 18 paints one of the most beautiful and powerful pictures of God’s immediate response to our plea.
And yet life gets busy, schedules drown out communion. Activity drowns out solace. And yet neighbors, friends, young people, and strippers still remain in desperate need of an escort to their freedom.
As you continue to pray over your list of the lost that
you know, remember this story as you do. Heaven is moved by our prayers. Chains are removed. Angels come to the rescue. People are set free. Could it be that someone’s deliverance is waiting on your prayers. On my prayers. Could it be one day our freedom will wait on the prayers of someone. And oh, how that changes things. In the words of Jentezen Franklin, the pastor at Free Chapel, let’s not create the “unemployment of angels.”
When is a time you have prayed for someone and you were able to actually witness the answer to your prayer?
When is the last time you have needed to know you were being covered in prayer?
Who are the people you are praying for now?
Ask God in this season who He is asking you to pray for. Then do it. Then watch heaven move.
